I love the lottery!  Most people think I don't, but I really do.  Good Lord, I would never actually play the lottery of course.  No, the lottery is simply my favorite tax.

What so many people don't seem to realize is that the lottery is a voluntary usage tax on ignorance.  If you understand number theory and basic statistics at all, you must necessary eschew the lottery as a complete waste of time and money.  Therefore, you are exempt from the tax and need not participate.  If you feel that $1 is a small price to pay in order to fantasize about how you would spend 50 bajillion dollars, then you have a small tax burden indeed.  If fear rules your life, and you feel compelled to participate in the office pool, because wouldn't it be horrible to be the only one not to win, then your tax bill might become a bit weighty.  But if you play religiously every week knowing that your time must come up eventually, then you get to pay the bulk of the ignorance tax, and rightly so. 

Now if only there were a way of advertising your participation in the lottery.  Then I would know which people I needed to avoid and to what magnitude.  And those who win, don't count, they already advertise well enough, and I will avoid them like the plague.

And by the way, if the office pool were to win and everybody took off, thank god that the group was culled so efficiently; I bet you can get a lot more work done now.  You won after all!